“Think about how close they were to beating Alabama. And then they go on and beat Notre Dame and win the national championship. This team was extremely close,” McShay said Friday during a teleconference to preview the draft. “They overcame a lot of off-the-field issues, all those suspensions and a couple injuries early in the year. And they finally jelled. Their schedule was not the toughest, I’ll give you that. If you’re a Georgia fan, I’m assuming there’s probably a little bit of frustration with all these players from Alec Ogletree to Jarvis Jones and maybe John Jenkins in the first round; Bacarri Rambo and Shawn Williams at safety, Cornelius Washington at defensive end, Sanders Commings at cornerback-safety, Kwame Geathers, Abry Jones, I mean the list goes on and on with these guys. It’s remarkable how much talent. I get it.

“But I also think you have to keep perspective, and how close they were to playing for the national championship and a game they in all likelihood would have been able to win. It was just that close, and they almost got started a quarter of the way into the year because of all the suspensions. Which, you can blame on the coaching staff, or the lack of discipline, wherever you wanna put it. But I don’t think you can lose sight of how close this team was.”

I really do wonder how we’ll look back on last year’s SECCG loss, say, five years from now.

30 responses to “Todd McShay, Georgia’s draftees and perspective”

I am at a loss understanding the continuing comments about the coaches being held responsible/accountable for enforcing rules when players act badly. How many times do we have to hear about the number of failed drug tests at other schools that are ignored (or in some cases, testing for marijuana not even being done)? Punishing players that violate rules is what we should strive for in CFB, not hold up as a negative example. Look at what was openly ignored at tosu, State Penn, Auburn, LSU, USC, TN, etc., and tell me that is how a university should act.

You can say there is a lack of discipline at UGA all you want , I would say the suspensions is because we do discipline….the first time a test is failed, or an arrest occurs. McShay was trying to be balanced but he is smart enough to see the difference and make the distinction. His comments are actually positive but it would have been great to acknowledge that UGA doesn’t sweep problems under the sofa. The NCAA should level the playing field on this subject by standardizing testing and punsihment. I am not happy that some of our players act like fools, but I am proud we don’t put our head in the sand like the others. Has that cost us some games? Yes, and that is a price we should all be glad to pay.

Blah, blah, blah….Yes, we had some great players, but, for whatever reason, we were not a great team till the end of the season. And to those who continue to cling to the idea we were five yards (or four, or whatever) from beating Bama, if it makes your life better to cling to this illusion, then by all means do so.

In my mind we were 350 yards rushing from beating Bama, playing Notre Dame, winning the national championship.

Unless and until we change that number to say 150 yards rushing, the last five yards won’t matter.

In my mind, in spite of how close the game seemed to be at the end, Bama was the better team, and the best team always wins the football game, no matter illusions or delusions to the contrary.

Having lived much of my life with illusion, I am now trying to be more realistic.

If Bama had been held to 150 yards rushing or less, the game would not have been close, and the best team would have played Notre Dame.

If it wasn’t for a swatted ball by a D lineman, Bama fans fess up that they thought UGA could and would win. Haven’t seen any Bammer players nor their fans denegrating last season’s team. Yet, one of our fans can profess , if it wasn’t for “350 yds on the ground”, that his own team wasn’t worthy; that the final 5 yds couldn’t have been made; that we are tying onto that five yds and a couple of downs like wussies wishing for a redo……

Spike, I’ve liked some of your stuff, but this take on that game shows me the old anti-Richt, anti-Bobo and team nonbeliever is still in your nightmares. What in the world keeps you from seeing reality when no rose-colored glasses are used? What UGA team did you ever like that met this criterion you think you espouse? It appears from your remarks above that you are becoming the wuss who can’t believe in reality. Hell, man, embrace a good season and wait for the next one to begin playing out before you go on another downer about coaches and the team.

“Richt and Bobo are great coaches for a great team” – if that were to slip from your brain and onto this blog, it would be nice to read from time to time.

Cojo….the only thing in my nightmares….well, the nightmares about football, anyway…is that for whatever reason, despite all the great players and all the great players that go on to the NFLBusiness, when a football team lines up and runs the football, as Bama is likely to do, we can’t stop them from doing it.

And, in spite of what you seem to read from what I said, if we had held Bama, again I say, if we had held Bama to 150 yards on the ground, the game would not have been close…in our favor, maybe I did not make that clear.

There is nothing wrong with Richt, nor Bobo as coaches. In my mind Mark Richt is the best coach we have had…ever. Lets put it this way, Todd Grantham does not appear to be the best defensive coach we have ever had, at least not yet.

If you want to read this as some sort of Anti-Richt diatribe, I can’t stop you, but it is not.

Not to add fuel to the bonfire, necessarily, but we did not exactly present a stone wall to anybody’s running game, them what had one, all year.

And….what do you think the chances are, say we get back to Atlanta for something other than Tech this year, what do you think the chances are we will get Bama, and what do you think the chances are Bama’s game plan will change?

Thus my concern.

Grantham seems to understand the 3-4 has not prospered in the NFLBusiness by stopping the run.

The fact that we were 5 yards away / tipped pass from winning is much more real than the “if” we held them to 150 yards of rushing. The fact that we were 5 yards away while giving up 350 yards of rushing is not an illusion. It’s how the actual game played out.

Cojones, again you equate honest and fair analysis with anti-Dawg sentiments, my friend. 350 yards is worth talking about, I think, and given that we have yet to see much of the 2014 D, it is all we CAN talk about in the long, tortuous spring!

It’s not an “illusion” that we were five yards from victory. That’s an undisputable fact. Now you can make a seperate case that it wouldn’t have had to come down to that last play had the defense played the run better but still, us being five yards from victory despite that is not an “illusion”.

And you are also wrong that the better team “always wins” in football. I can think of several examples that disprove that. Now if you are suggesting that in the end it doesn’t matter if you were the better team if you lose, I would agree.

I get what you’re saying. In the end it doesn’t matter if you were more talented etc. but we can all site examples of having outplayed someone and end up losing to them. Not that I take comfort in “moral victories”.

Hail, man….I grew up the son of a big Dawg, I spent my formative years gnawing the drying bones of moral victories against the team that was Tech….fuck a buncha moral victories….I want real ones…against, like Florida and that prince of Debbie Downer’s dreamscape….Bama.

What I want before the bad men come haul me off to the great dawg pound in the sky, is one more national championship…or two….or three.

From where I sit, Bama is the main obstacle to that there thing. To beat them and manage to leave my heart intact we got to stop the run….and I don’t mean the Missouri run, or the Vandy run, I mean the big bad Bama bad ass, knock your teeth out and grin at you run.

An illusion, by any other name is just another moral victory….

“The winners were laughing and joking, the losers were hollering deal, damnit, deal.”

Yes, Alabama was the better team…but Georgia was the second best team, not only in that game, but in America. That’s something to be at least a little positive about? Better 5 yards away than 5 losses away.

I agree with much of what you have stated in your comments on this subject but Earnhardt senior’s philosophy isn’t applicable here. We don’t all run on the same track, on the same day, with an equal opportunity. If you are the second best of 120 participants in haphazard conditions, played by different rules, in different geographies, at various times, you are not a “loser”, second or otherwise.

I seem to remember a lot of discussion on the inability to stop the run in which Grantham and Richt addressed it and talked about lining up with four down linemen more and also rotating more d linemen. Maybe that will help.

Also, although the 3-4 is the base, we lined up with 4 down linemen far more often than some seem to realize when they talk about the 3-4’s weakness against the run.

Me? I think it was telling when we found out just how fat John Jenkins was during the season. How he got fatter during the course of a football season is pretty interesting to ponder. But we already were short on d linemen and one obviously wasn’t able to last very long. That’s part of the problem with the run. But I think we also suffered from having inside backers that were long on speed and short on beef and physicality. Put another way, too mnay of our inside backers were too small to play the run like we needed them to against a team like Bama. Even Ogletree. Hard hitter, very physical, but too small. Robinson was way too small and I don’t know what Gilliard’s problem was. Shawn Williams talked about this. he mentioned that he told the coaches he personally wished that Harerra would play more. Harerra was our best run stuffing ILB so why he didn’t play more, I can’t imagine.

And one more thing, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that Mike Thornton is considerably shorter than jenkins and Geathers. I always thought those guys were way too tall to play the interior. Too tough for a guy 6’3” or taller to get as low as he needs to get.

A great discussion on here and the key to last year’s season. Despite the fun I had watching a great GA team last year, and regardless of McShay, it remains a fair question why what appears to be an NFL D was not able to stop the run.

I will again make the point that CTG’s “fiery” nature and apparent lack of introspection / humility when talking w/ the press gives him extra undeserved cache with the fans. Perception is everything, why CEO’s and presidents tend to be much taller than average as reported by M. Gladwell. An ugly truth about us humans.

I recently watched the SECCG again and in fairness our D got two three and outs in the 4TH Q when it mattered the most – something I did not remember.